New edition of 'A Farewell to Arms' publishes Hemingway's 47 alternate endings to his classic novel

A Farewell to Arms

Original: Scribner is releasing the new print with the original cover that was published on the first edition

Ernest Hemingway toiled over the final scene in 'A Farewell to Arms,' writing and re-writing 47 different possible endings to the novel before its publication in 1929.

In the end, it seems, he found the right words. The dark, melancholy conclusion helped turn the book into a bestseller and cement his reputation as one of the great American writers.

Now, each of the 47 rejected endings are available in a new edition of the classic novel -- available for sale on Tuesday.

The publisher, Scribner -- which is now owned by Simon & Schuster -- hopes a new generation of readers and writers will take Hemingway's notes as a way to pick apart just what made the master so great.

In the original published ending, protagonist Frederic Henry walks out of the hospital in the rain after his son is stillborn and his lover Catherine dies of a hemorrhage.

It is cool and distant -- a bleak reminder of Hemingway's message that no amount of comfort can buffer a man from the savages of the world.

But it took Hemingway, who committed suicide in 1961 at age 61, four dozen tries to get there -- all leaving a different taste in the reader's mouth.

Ernest Hemingway

Classic: 'A Farewell toe Arms' was Ernest Hemingway's first bestseller and it catapulted him into the realm of the great American authors

One has Henry's son live, though its mother still dies: 'He does not belong in this story. He starts a new one. It is not fair to start a new story at the end of an old one but that is the way it happens. There is no end except death and birth is the only beginning,' he wrote.

Another waxes so romantic it is nearly saccharine: 'Finally I slept; I must have slept because I woke. When I woke the sun was coming in the open window and I smelled the spring morning after the rain and saw the sun on the trees in the courtyard and for that moment it was all the way it had been.'

Hemingway tries being uncharacteristically spiritual, as well, writing: 'The thing is that there is nothing you can do about it. It is all right if you believe in God and love God.'

However, it's the ending that the writer finally landed on that still feels the most appropriate, the publishing house's head says.

'Ultimately, I think we have to be glad that he went with the ending that he went with,' Susan Moldow, of Scribner, told the New York Times.


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